Charlie Weis on K&C details Matt Patricia's struggles in Detroit

Former Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis joined Kirk & Callahan with Gerry Callahan and Mike Mutnansky on Friday morning to discuss Tom Brady and the Patriots, but also Matt Patricia and the Lions, and how tough it can be for an assistant in New England to be a successful head coach.

Weis is part of a group that hasn't had much success, and he went into what he feels the Lions' biggest issues are following getting blown out by the Jets on Monday Night Football.

“First of all, there’s only one Bill Belichick. To compare Matt [Patricia], or Josh [McDaniels], or me, or Bill O’Brien, or Romeo [Crennel] — everyone wants to say you’re Belichick, but that is not true," Weis said. "What the Patriots do is give you an opportunity where if you do really well, you’re going to get an opportunity to do it your way. So he goes in there, and the biggest problem offensively was toughness and not being able to run the football. Unfortunately, if you watched that game, it didn’t look like they made much headway on that end. Then defensively, where that is his expertise, he was hired not because he’s a rocket scientist, but because he was a very, very good defensive coordinator over the years. I think that is probably his biggest disappointment.

"Obviously, he’s disappointed in how the offense played, but I think his biggest disappointment is the defense almost looked non-competitive. It might gets worse before it gets better, but it is going to get better because he’s there and Bob Quinn is there. People try and emulate characteristics of the Patriot Way and at the end of the day you end up moving it in the right direction as long as you don’t panic and follow the blueprint.”

Weis noted the timelines to get things right are not very long as the NFL has a win-now attitude.

“Each guy has had their own set of issues," he said of former Patriots assistants. "With me, I went from pros to college and I had players the first couple of years to be very competitive, but I had made a decision where I went that I was going to do it the right way. Even if it took more time, I was going to do it the right way. The problem is in the NFL, well it didn’t work out for me because when you think you have it straight, you’re not there anymore because you haven’t won enough. In the pros, you don’t have that timeframe. You don’t get five years. You don’t get the full length of the contract to see how it plays out.

"At the end of the first year, the honeymoon is over and at the end of the second year, if things haven’t turned in the right direction you are on the hot seat, and by the end of the third year if you don’t have it right you are packing and somebody else is in your shoes. I think the most important thing is you have to stay the course and do things that you learned, that you know were successful, but at the same time, there’s a timeframe that you are allowed to do that with and there lies your biggest issues. Josh went there to Denver — probably the worst thing to happen to him in Denver was starting off 6-0. You start off everything is going great and everyone has you as the second-coming, when the thing falls apart all of a sudden you are a horse’s ass because you couldn’t get it right.”